{"id":58,"date":"2024-10-18T15:00:09","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/?p=58"},"modified":"2025-09-30T10:33:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T10:33:51","slug":"week-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/2024\/10\/18\/week-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 1 &#8211; The Essential Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Week one was experimental and a way to generate game ideas. We were given our brief in which we had to make a games design document (GDD) for a digital game. A GDD is a descriptive living document that serves as a blueprint from which your game is to be built. We discussed what makes a good GDD such as being detailed, accessible, clear, and includes no unnecessary jargon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During our lecture, we learned about the essential experience and its importance in making the game believable as well as getting players invested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The Essential Experience <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"font-size:clamp(14px, 0.875rem + ((1vw - 3.2px) * 0.25), 18px);\"><em>\u201cYou don\u2019t need to perfectly replicate real experiences to make a good game. What you need to do is to capture the essence of those experiences for your game\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<cite>&#8211; Tomas Gonzalez<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During this lesson, we focused on these three questions: What experience do I want the players to have? What is essential to that experience? How can my game capture that essence? To help us further understand this concept, we looked at pre-existing games and their core experiences. <em>The Sims<\/em> at its core strives for creativity, freedom and imagination. <em>Silent Hill<\/em> on the other hand aims for the players to experience thrill, eeriness and helplessness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After a brief reminder of what autobiographical and empathy games are, we were tasked with designing our own game based on our experiences. I chose to make it about motivation and productiveness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-79fb870f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-79fb870f wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td>Goal <\/td><td>Execute your plans and be productive<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Conflict(s)<\/td><td>If you don&#8217;t carry out your plans, it will decrease your mood into becoming more negative. <br>Too much of one type of activity can be draining.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Resources <\/td><td>Spending time outside, with friends, leisure, sleep, food, hygiene<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Desired Outcome(s)<\/td><td>Rather than just wanting, the player does these things and has a good balance so your mood is lifted. <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Undesirable Outcome(s)<\/td><td>If you are unable to be productive or find equilibrium, the character becomes overwhelmed which is also a game over. <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Audiovisualisation of State of Play                                                                                                       <\/td><td>The game begins when the character wakes and progresses through the day. The &#8220;wants&#8221; (e.g. Brush teeth, text back, etc.) appear in thought bubbles around the character. To complete them, the player drags the character towards the items\/spaces that match a thought bubble, otherwise, they disappear. These &#8220;wants&#8221; are timed and appear randomly but correspond with the environment. If the player does not reach a certain mood level, they won&#8217;t progress to the next level. <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"761\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2024\/10\/IMG_0530-1-1024x761.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-82\" style=\"width:489px;height:auto\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Example of starting level <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-query alignfull is-layout-flow wp-block-query-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-pale-cyan-blue-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1 is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--30);padding-right:16px;padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--30);padding-left:16px\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Week one was experimental and a way to generate game ideas. We were given our brief in which we had to make a games design document (GDD) for a digital game. A GDD is a descriptive living document that serves as a blueprint from which your game is to be built. We discussed what makes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-summaries","category-year-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/rp11g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}